WHY PRISON REFORM MAY FINALLY OCCUR: IT’S THE MONEY, STUPID
“In this economic climate, it is impossible to maintain the vast prison state without raising taxes on the (white) middle class.”
– Michelle Alexander
The Must Read book among those involved in prison and parole reform right now is Michelle Alexander’s brilliant “The New Jim Crow.”
At the recent Three Strikes Symposium I attended, three different panelists managed to work mentions of her book into the conversation.
Over the weekend, the NY Times ran an Op Ed by Michelle Alexander called “In Prison Reform, Money Trumps Civil Rights”
Have a look. Here’s a clip:
Thirty years of civil rights litigation and advocacy have failed to slow the pace of a racially biased drug war or to prevent the emergence of a penal system of astonishing size. Yet a few short years of tight state budgets have inspired former “get tough” true believers to suddenly denounce the costs of imprisonment. “We’re wasting tax dollars on prisons,” they say. “It’s time to shift course.”
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, shocked many earlier this year when he co-wrote an essay for The Washington Post calling on “conservative legislators to lead the way in addressing an issue often considered off-limits to reform: prisons.”
Republican governors had already been sounding the same note. As California was careering toward bankruptcy last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lamented that more money was being spent on prisons than on education. Priorities “have become out of whack over the years,” he said. “What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison uniforms than on caps and gowns?” Another Republican governor, John R. Kasich of Ohio, recently announced support for reducing penalties for nonviolent drug offenders as part of an effort to slash the size of the state’s prison population.
PS: As much as I like Alexander’s Op Ed, I like Doug Berman’s take on Alexander’s essay even more. Here’s what he says:
I share Michelle’s belief that mass incarceration is not going to go away unless and until we have a “a major shift in public consciousness.” However, I strongly believe that liberty , not fairness , need to be the guiding principle in this major shift. After all, one big aspect of the modern mass incarceration movement has been an affinity for structured guideline reforms and the elimination of parole all in order to have greater fairness and consistency at sentence. What we have really achieve is less liberty as much, if not more, than less fairness.
Put slightly differently and in the spirit of the headline of Michelle’s important op-ed, I strongly believe the prison reform movement needs to focus on civil liberties as much if not more than civil rights . Liberty is a value that all Americans prize and support (at least in their rhetoric), and it is a value that rarely (unlike fairness) can be seen as a zero-sum game
THE SAD SIGHT OF LAUSD ATTORNEYS INTERROGATING SCHOOL LIBRARIANS
I’ve seen a lot of strange things in two decades as a reporter, but nothing quite as disgraceful and weird as this inquisition the LAUSD is inflicting upon more than 80 school librarians.
-Hector Tobar
This article appeared Friday in the LA Times, but I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it. Good for Hector Tobar for shining a strong light this shameful spectacle.
In a basement downtown, the librarians are being interrogated.
On most days, they work in middle schools and high schools operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District, fielding student queries about American history and Greek mythology, and retrieving copies of vampire novels.
But this week, you’ll find them in a makeshift LAUSD courtroom set up on the bare concrete floor of a building on East 9th Street. Several sit in plastic chairs, watching from an improvised gallery as their fellow librarians are questioned.
A court reporter takes down testimony. A judge grants or denies objections from attorneys. Armed police officers hover nearby. On the witness stand, one librarian at a time is summoned to explain why she — the vast majority are women — should be allowed to keep her job.
The librarians are guilty of nothing except earning salaries the district feels the need to cut. But as they’re cross-examined by determined LAUSD attorneys, they’re continually put on the defensive.
“When was the last time you taught a course for which your librarian credential was not required?” an LAUSD attorney asked Laura Graff, the librarian at Sun Valley High School, at a court session on Monday.
“I’m not sure what you’re asking,” Graff said. “I teach all subjects, all day. In the library.”
[SNIP]For LAUSD officials, it’s a means to an end: balancing the budget.
Some 85 credentialed teacher-librarians got layoff notices in March. If state education cuts end up being as bad as most think likely, their only chance to keep a paycheck is to prove that they’re qualified to be transferred into classroom teaching jobs.
Since all middle and high school librarians are required to have a state teaching credential in addition to a librarian credential, this should be an easy task — except for a school district rule that makes such transfers contingent on having taught students within the last five years.To get the librarians off the payroll, the district’s attorneys need to prove to an administrative law judge that the librarians don’t have that recent teaching experience. To try to prove that they do teach, the librarians, in turn, come to their hearings with copies of lesson plans they’ve prepared and reading groups they’ve organized.
DOES OBAMA ADMIN’S “SECURE COMMUNITIES” DEPORTATION INITIATIVE HARM PUBLIC SAFETY IN CALIFORNIA?
Lawmakers and, in some cases, law enforcement officials, in California plus Massachusetts, Illinois and New York, are not happy with the way the Obama administration has been deporting people with minor criminal offenses, reports the Wall Street Journal. Worse, in many cases, people are deported with no criminal record at all.
LA’s Sheriff Lee Baca is for the program. San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessy…not so much.
Last week, San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessy said that as of June 1, he would no longer cooperate with ICE to facilitate the deportation of low-level offenders and those who have no criminal record. He said Secure Communities had a chilling effect on immigrants who witness or are victims of crime. “Crimes go unreported—and this affects everyone, citizens and noncitizens alike,” he said.
Too often, critics say, the statute ends up snaring people like Isaura Garcia,
Isaura Garcia of Los Angeles said she dialed 911 to report domestic abuse by her partner in February. When police entered her fingerprints in the database linked to ICE, the system determined she was in the U.S. illegally. Though she had no criminal record, she landed in deportation proceedings.
After the American Civil Liberties Union brought her case to light Thursday, ICE said it would ask the immigration court to end removal proceedings against her.
Read the rest.
Photo: Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle